


on aging when you're ageless

by The_Crab_Overlord



Series: Victor's Tower AU [2]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse, An au of an au of an au of an au., But this is 2k already, F/M, In which I watched the Young Victoria and it cleaned my skin, Might extend idk, So you can take it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:22:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28387725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Crab_Overlord/pseuds/The_Crab_Overlord
Summary: in which lesia cormander gets attached
Relationships: Lesia Cormander/Pattrick Richarson
Series: Victor's Tower AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1779544
Comments: 11
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [statsvitenskap](https://archiveofourown.org/users/statsvitenskap/gifts), [luciditylost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luciditylost/gifts), [ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes/gifts).



> Look Mom, no Skyrates.

Lesia Cormander will only win twice in her life (and even those come at a cost).

She will win her games.

And she will win her marriage. 

Lesia is twenty-five when she meets Elle. 

Elle scares Lesia. She had never before seen a Victor so charmed by the whims and wishes of a President. She knew that this was no slight against her, but it hurt to see this child (they were all children when they entered the Tower, a fact that was hard to remember sometimes) be so...enchanted by President Uther. It made something in her gut twinge. 

Uther was a cold man, but Elle spoke of him as if he were an oasis in the desert. It’s when the Peacekeepers came after her for the seventh time that Lesia decided that something had to be done. 

She sat in Elle’s room, waiting for her to return. 

“You don’t have to listen to him, y’know.” Elle looked shocked that someone was in her room, obscured by the dark. 

“Wha- who?”

“It’s Lesia. We’ve met before. You...you interest me, Elle.”

“Uther said I shouldn’t-”

“Talk to me? Because I’m a danger to you? If I wanted to be a danger to you, I would be. But, here we are, sitting in the dark, in your own room. It makes you wonder, really. Am I just a danger to him, Elle?”

Lesia left, closing the door behind her, leaving Elle dazed and confused.

(Uther does not learn about this meeting.)

Lesia’s second victory arrives when she is twenty-six, head held over a bucket of freezing water, her hair sticking to her neck, coldly reminded of a time eight years ago when she was in this very cell for three months. 

She’d gone and messed things up for herself again, her and her big mouth, as usual. She had tried to film the Peacekeepers taking Rishi away to gain another pair of wings and had almost made it back to her own PC to upload the precious footage when she was knocked to the ground and dragged out, somehow knowing that this time would be different than all the others. 

Someone would have seen, at least, why her back was occasionally covered at galas. 

“His name is Pattrick.”

Her words came out like her breaths; short, clipped, and labored. 

"His name is Pattrick - Pattrick Richardson. He's a- a Peacekeeper." Lesia grimaced under the hold of the Peacekeeper that had her now. Roman looked at her with a decent amount of intent. 

"You would willingly submit yourself into holy matrimony- with a Peacekeeper? It's almost laughable, really, my dear Lesia."

"We're old friends," Lesia fired back. "I'd rather end up with one of my friends than one of your- your crotchety old ones."

Roman smirked. "As much as I would love to pair you off with one of my, ah, crotchety old friends, I'll settle for this. Of course, Lesia, I'd hate to see what would happen to one of your little friends if ah, you went back on your precious word, my dear." Lesia nodded, spitting out a bit of blood and water. 

Lesia was twenty-six, looking twenty-one when Pattrick was brought in to the cell where she was being held. He was confused, of course, it's not every day you're thrown into a van and taken to the belovedly nicknamed "President's Basement." Lesia was silent, staring at the ground as Roman explained the life ahead of Pattrick to him. He'd live in the Tower with Lesia, stream with her, play the part of the Overlord's husband.

He agreed once he saw that he had no choice.

They'd see eachother once before the wedding. 

They happily announced their engagement at the Spring Gala, flowers in Lesia's hair as pink as her blushing cheeks. 

She prayed it was enough for Roman. 

Roman believed that it would be good for public image. A victor who incited rebellious plots and a Peacekeeper who had served as her guard. A true love story an idiot could buy. 

Lesia spent many days alone in the pool room. She felt her muscles and bones stretch with the movement of her arms pulling her through the water, pulling her into a world away where Victors and losers didn't exist. Into a simpler world. 

Into home.

Into home.

This is home, now, of course, Lesia thought as she dried her hair in the sun on the balcony. Home is where Snart is. Home is where Rishi is. Home is with Havok and Saph and Mis and Ozzie and and and and....

Lesia was twenty-seven when home became with Pattrick.

Her birthday came and passed with the usual amount of flair, but Pattrick was “allowed” to visit her, this time. He kisses her cheek, and they are a picture that exudes elegance and romance. 

And it’s almost enough. 

The wedding was going to be held in the ballroom, and it was heralded as some great thing, a royal wedding in the country known for its very stable democracy. 

A democracy. Lesia chuckled to herself. 

When she was shown mockups of the dresses that Panem would be able to choose from, she audibly asked why there wasn’t any armor featured in them.

“Because,” Roman began, “you’re vulnerable now. Pattrick isn’t like everyone else, Lesia. He’s your equal. You’re vulnerable to him.”

Lesia knew what he really meant.

“You’re both vulnerable to me.”

The wedding is nice enough. It makes magazine headlines, and by the time it’s all over, Lesia is tired of wearing the dress. She knows that enough people will want to copy it, and in her opinion?

Never emulate something you don’t know the full story of.

So when she walks down the aisle in shoes that are at least comfortable, Roman hanging off of her arm, acting the part of a proud father, following the flowers left by Ozzie, it hits her that she’s about to sign herself away, about to resign herself to yet another forced attachment. 

But as she stands at the altar, wrapping a rope across hers and Pattrick’s wrists, Rishi and Mis and Saph and Snart standing behind her, she knows that she’ll still have them.

Right?

And as she feels the sharpness of glass cut into her hand when Rishi announces ser own engagement, Pattrick gently picking the pieces out of her flesh, thankful that the glass was empty. Uther eyes them, finally giving his approval to his couple, his new prime example of how life flourished under his reign.

No matter how much it hurt Lesia to see Pattrick used.

No matter how much it hurt her to see Rishi manipulated into ser own marriage, ser own life as Uther’s personal guardian angel. No matter how much it hurt her to watch Ozzie and Elle and- and even Arthur. 

Lesia is twenty-seven when she sits awake in bed, Pattrick as far away from her on that same bed as humanly possible. 

The silence between them breaks. 

“You didn’t have to, y’know,” Lesia breathes. 

“Hmm?”

“You could have just- said no.”

Pattrick turned around to face Lesia’s back, illuminated by the sunlight coming in through the window. “And leave you to rot with some cronie of Sartorius' that would have sapped the life from you, turning you into just some pretty face - for real? No, absolutely not. If anything, Lesia, I did this to protect you, to be by your side.”

“And now? You’re stuck here for the rest of your life, or until I inevitably mess something up and get us...divorced. Or even worse, get you killed, or hurt, or something, Pattrick!”

Her voice rang from the corners of the room as she turned on the final word of her sentence. Pattrick saw nothing but red eyes and tears and sorrow and anger and and and and-

Pattrick gently scooted across the bed towards his...this was his wife, now, he supposed. 

She was his wife. 

He scooted across the bed towards her and brushed the tears from her cheek. 

“I would rather get hurt protecting you, than get hurt protecting some piece of Capitol scum that wants you to be their idea of perfect,” he inhaled, “because this-” he gestured to Lesia’s shrunken form, “-this is perfect to me. If I only get one chance at a good marriage, then I’m happy with what I have.”

Lesia is twenty-seven when Pattrick meets Ozzie.

The situation always could have been better (some Peacekeeper thing (It was always the Peacekeepers, wasn’t it) and Ozzie had knocked quietly on the door while Pattrick made some vain attempt to braid Lesia’s hair again. Ozzie never liked to talk about it. So Lesia smiled at Ozzie and asked, 

“Would you teach him to braid my hair? I can’t see back there, y’know.”

Pattrick is twenty-nine when he gains his first semblance of a child. 

Pattrick, of course, doesn’t know how to be a father. Albeit, neither does Lesia.

He knows this unfortunate fact, of course, but he takes it in stride when Ozzie grabs onto his sleeve at a Gala to hide, and it almost warmed his heart to know that they trusted him like that. It would have warmed his heart if he knew it wasn’t because Ozzie feared the crowds, unlike her mentor who basked in it, who flourished in it. 

Her mentor that knew the eyes of a Senator were always on her. Her mentor that knew a Peacekeeper watched her every move.

Ozzie asks Lesia for a sip of wine, and Lesia tells her no. Lesia does not wish for Ozzie to end up like her, forever trapped in the body of someone she was not.

(Little does Lesia know, this simple act of protection forces Ozzie to become something they are not instead. Ozzie will forever be a younger sibling, never allowed to taste what gave Lesia some reprieve from the stresses of a life unlived.)

Lesia is thirty when Tony arrives, and thirty-one when Jamie arrives after him. 

It was actually Pattrick’s idea to take Tony under their wing. He wasn’t used to the idea of a decade victor. He had no reason to be used to it, really. As the first married Victor, Lesia was still forced into the spotlight, and it was at Tony’s Gala that she realized that Pattrick was right. Tony was young, so much younger than her. He looked...rather plain compared to floor seven, really, and she couldn’t help but wonder how he won.

But she knew.

Everyone in the tower shares one thing in common. 

They were all killers.

But while Lesia was born to kill, raised to kill, Tony was never meant to do that. She would make the solstices rue for ever making this kid have to go through that. She watched him pull at the scarf ‘round his neck, and was certain that Pattrick was right. 

Even fathers had to have parents, Lesia decided. 

Lesia is thirty-eight when her time finally comes. 

She holds Pattrick’s hand on their way up to the roof, and stands there as she watches him help everyone into the helicarrier as she made sure everyone coming up the stairs was okay. 

She was sure she saw Ozzie and Elle and Tony get on.

She jumped across the gap into Pattrick’s arms, and he held her as they smiled, finally free. 

“You won’t-”

Pattrick shushed Lesia, knowing what she wanted to say. 

“I would marry you all over again if it meant reassuring you that I love you.”

The moment is broken when she sees Elle and Tony standing on the roof, their hands in the air, being shoved behind Peacekeepers. 

“Elle? Tony?” She calls out to them, helping Jamie into the carrier, as a bullet whizzes past her, forcing her to drop to her knees.

They can’t hear her. 

Lesia moves to stand from her kneeling position in the helicarrier. Pattrick knows what is about to happen and pushes her back down, shaking his head at her. 

"We have to- Elle and Tony, we- Solstices," she growls.

Even still, Pattrick holds her down. "You aren't replaceable to me, Lesia. If you stand up, if you jump out of this copter, Uther will kill you. Either that, or you'll wish you were dead, and I- we- we can't have that."

And yet she screams for Elle and Tony and Ozzie, her younger siblings, her mentees, her- her friends as bullets fly through the air, as the carriers pull themselves through the sky, to their new beginning. 

And yet Pattrick will let her cry into his shoulder, silently letting the tears of grief and attachment fall from his own face. 

Lesia is thirty-eight when she loses part of her family.


	2. promising, promising

Lesia awakens, a week before she turns thirty-nine, to the alarm that signals another new chapter in her life. 

Parker stands in the doorway as she laces up her boots, preparing to head into the lower levels for one last meeting.

“You’re really doing this?” Her hands pause, and she does not look up. 

“Of course. I have to, Parker. No matter how you feel, they’re still in danger.”

They nod, and the two finally make eye contact. “You’re sure you don’t want me to go?”

“I’m sure, Parks. It’ll be all hands on deck when we get back. Go...hide somewhere. Go to classes, for once, maybe.” 

Pattrick comes out of the bathroom at that moment, waving tentatively at Parker while Lesia begins to stand up. 

“Ready, love?” he asks.

“As I’ll ever be.”

The ride to the Capitol is quiet. She can see the effects of the rebellion on the land. Not as many workers out, the bombs over Twelve. Thirteen had absorbed all of the survivors, she knew. She worked with a few on plans for the rescue mission. 

One guard stood to address the rest of the flight crew. It was a small group; herself, Pattrick, another woman, and two men. She didn’t bother to learn their names, just in case something happened. 

She also knew that they didn’t value this as much as she did. 

“We’re going to land on the Tower roof, and break in from there. We have twenty minutes to get in and get out, am I understood?” Lesia nodded, Pattrick squeezing her knee before everyone stood, preparing to make the jump from the helicarrier to the roof.

Lesia heard the carrier slow down, and she inhaled. She knew one thing; that she didn’t know what she was about to walk into. What if they had messed with their heads, or something? She knew that imprisonment was hell, and that’s why she couldn’t fail. 

She couldn’t do that to Elle, to Ozzie, to Tony.

So when the helicarrier got as close as it could to the rooftop, she jumped down, tucking and rolling before standing. She looked behind her, not really registering what was happening other than the door she had departed only months earlier that led into the tower. She slammed it with the butt of her rifle, breaking the lock, and ran into the staircase, trying to remember which door led into floor eight (it’s the door marked “8,” she realized, having only been in the staircase once before. 

She slammed on the door handle with the rifle, kicking in the door.

It was a mess. Clearly lived in by someone who didn’t want to be there.

Dishes undone.

TV is still on.  
And Tony is on the couch.

And he looks terrified. 

Lesia ripped off her helmet, placing it on the ground, so she didn’t startle him.

“Lesia?” He sounded weak, like a puppy expecting to be kicked. 

She waved her comrades in, telling Pattrick with a wave of her hand to go find Elle and Ozzie before rushing forward. She took Tony up in her arms, hugging him tightly, and yet softly, seeing his bruised arms peek out from under his shirt. 

“We gotta go bud, we gotta go,” she whispered as she scooped him up off the couch, “can you stand?” He nodded, leaning on her. 

“Where’s-” 

“He’s getting Elle and Ozzie, they’ll meet us on the roof. I’ve gotta get you on the chopper.” She placed an arm around him as she guided him up the staircase, back into the wind of the roof. She handed Tony up to a waiting medic, before heading back into the Tower, placing her helmet back on her head. 

“Pattrick? Pattrick!” she called, finally spotting him in the depths of floor seven. Elle ran to her, wrapping skinny arms around her waist. Ozzie stood behind Pattrick, a blank stare of disbelief washed over them. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay, we got ‘em, Les.” 

Lesia nodded before waving. “Move out,” she called, leading Elle back up the stairs, passing her into the helicarrier before climbing in herself. 

Ozzie got in by herself, quietly buckling herself into a seat. Tony was already asleep, and the medic passed him off to Lesia while he checked on Elle and Ozzie. Lesia sat down, his head in her lap, passing light fingers over the fresh bandages on his arms, before settling one hand in his hair. 

The ride was quiet, too quiet. Neither Elle nor Ozzie said a word until it was almost over, and it felt like this was the first time Tony had slept in days.

Of course, Lesia noticed what was different about Elle’s eyes.

Of course, she wasn’t going to say anything. That wouldn’t be a very nice “welcome home,” in her opinion. 

When they landed, people began piling into the helicarrier, a lot of them with weapons, and she knew it was going to scare the kids. Pattrick grabbed Ozzie while Lesia took Elle and Tony, before they were escorted out of the helicarrier into a hospital room with a few beds and some chairs. Elle was collapsing as they got her into her own bed, and Tony was asleep, and Ozzie was trying to argue with someone, and it was all too too loud. 

Lesia silenced the room, shooing everyone away but a doctor. She saw her floormates crowded outside through the observation window, and she gave a slight wave to them, before going back to her task of setting the kids up in beds.

When they all fell asleep, Lesia collapsed, fighting to stay awake. 

Pattrick ushered her into a makeshift bed made out of one of the chairs, promising her that he’d stay awake to watch for them, promising to visit Parker, promising, promising, promising.


	3. on ancient words that change me and you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one goes out to my mans @wreakinghavok :) 
> 
> Okay the discord calls me the angst queen or whatever but even this one made me a little bit sad.

Of course, she wasn’t going to say anything. That wouldn’t be a very nice “welcome home,” in her opinion. 

Lesia lingers on Elle’s eyes, and she thinks about her dear friend, EF. Sitting in the room, watching Elle, her mind wanders, wanders back to a time when she did say something to Ef about her own, snake-like eyes, about Mis’ voice (or lack thereof).

Over dinner.

(Granted, she was fifteen, but this is when you learn that some things are better left unsaid.)

Dinner that night was salad. A nice salad, Lesia had helped make it. 

The silence was awkward and stiff, it always was. But, Lesia didn’t enjoy that. She never knew exactly why the floor was like that, only that something had happened before she had arrived, back when Floor Five was still in the spotlight. 

“Ef, why are your eyes like that?” Lesia asked, with all the innocence of a firstborn lamb.

Ef nearly dropped her fork. 

The ten pairs of eyes staring at her while she stammered made things worse, she barely even noticed Havok slip away from the table.

Saph had almost dragged her away after dinner, Mis following. They took her to Lesia's room, sitting her down on the bed. 

"You ah- wanna go, Mis?" Mis nodded and began typing into their phone, using the app that gave them something of what their voice used to be. They had typed in silence for a while, the air itself in the young Victor's room standing on edge. 

Lesia was in shock. 

How could Havok...to both of them?

"Havok did it?" The heavy words were the first out of her mouth. He couldn't have, right? Havok was her friend. Underneath the anger there had been a softness to him. This couldn't be the guy that she streamed with on late nights when neither one could sleep.

She had no clue that the sleeplessness was because of guilt. 

Lesia broke from her room, bare feet on carpet, then hardwood, then stairs, back to hardwood, then to carpet, then in front of Havok's door. 

She didn't knock. He wasn't streaming, he was just editing a video or something, she didn't care enough to notice as she spun him around in his chair. 

"It was you?" she husked out. Havok knew exactly what they meant, a face lined with the worries of tower life meeting a face fresh and unknowing, a face wishing they didn't know. He was speechless. 

"I-I can't believe you would- I trusted you! I trusted-" her chest heaved at the thought of this idealization being unwound. She runs again. It's what she knows. She goes to the balcony.

And she sits alone.

When Lesia is fifteen, she goes back to the only person she thinks she can trust. 

He’s a Senator, the one in charge of the Peacekeepers and the Victors themselves, and he had started the same year Lesia won. They had met a few times, and had hit it off quite well, often calling her “darling,” which she hated, but smiled and bore it for the cameras, who ate up the image of a Victor and a Senator working together at galas. 

She sent him a summons through an email.

Peacekeepers arrive an hour later to take her to a car. 

Roman Sartorius stands outside a building, and walks her into the basement. Lesia squints in the sun, her skin pricking, hungry for its embrace. 

“What seems to be the issue, my little Overlord?” he croons. She grits her teeth, unsure of how to respond, how to pose the question. 

“Would the government really...would-” she inhales. 

“‘Would the government’ what, dear?” he tapped his foot, almost impatiently.

“Would the people in charge of us really like… change the way we looked, just for...I dunno, thinking about leaving?”

“You’re referring to Misery, aren’t you? Or Eden, one of the two? What your Havok did was very brave, in my opinion, really.”

Her breath catches in her throat. She tries hard to stay calm, to stay composed, to keep that royal air about her, to keep the raging fire at bay.

“You mean-”

“Lesia, every punishment is given to someone who does something wrong.”

“They didn’t do anything wrong! They were just-”

“Darling, you’re not saying you agree with them, are you?” and Lesia realizes her mistake when the Peacekeepers are waved back in.

When Lesia wakes up, she is no longer fifteen.

She is old, much older, no longer a soft teenager. She has an angular jaw and- solstices, she looks like she belongs on floor five with the other eighteen-year-olds. The bruises gather on her torso and arms, her knuckles bruised from trying to fight back. 

The handcuff marks around her wrists shows where she’s failed. 

When she is actually old, much older, she revisits that moment with Roman, and the scene unfolds like it typically does now. No more summons in a nice car, no more nice buildings. It’s all dark vans and blindfolds and handcuffs now. 

"You're not-"

"Cut out for this?" she spits, "I know, I know, you keep telling me, but as-" she inhales, "if you hadn't lied to me all those years ago, maybe I would agree."

"It wasn't lying, dear, it was trying to keep you safe."

"Keeping me in a dark cell by myself for six hours after knocking me senseless wasn't keeping me safe, Roman. Changing- solstices - changing the way my body looked wasn’t keeping me safe! You were keeping me controlled. You were keeping yourself safe. That's all you care about! You don't care about anybody you're in charge of, you don't care about your niece or- or your brother, you don't care about anybody but yourself, and you sure as hell don't care about me!"

A red mark appeared on her cheek as he responded. 

"First Ozzie, now Elle, Lesia? You're going soft. You can't keep your emotions in check. You care too much. See, I was like you once. All big and brave and hopelessly stupid," he chuckles, taking a drink of the amber liquid from the glass cup in his hand. "When I learned that people didn't care about me the way I cared about them? I stopped. And, Solstices, Lesia, look where I am now, I have more power than the beloved President could ever dream of. I command the armies, I command the media, and most importantly, I command you." He accentuated his final remark with a firm tap on her nose. 

He rose from his chair and looked out the window. "I never saw you as the motherly type, Lesia."

"Every ruler has to have an heir," she remarked before being silenced again. Clearly, Roman wanted all the attention in this moment. 

"Most rulers have husbands, Lesia."

"I will not-"

"Don't say it, Lesia. We both know if I wanted to, you would."

The Peacekeepers standing at her side didn't even have to touch her to silence her. 

"I could take everything away from you, if I could. Your body, your voice...it's amazing the advancements in science we're making, dear. I'm sure someone would love to have a-" 

“Please, just stop.” 

Roman looked at her, that powerful voice wavering, almost begging for mercy, for something other than this.

Lesia knew what it was like to hate a man. 

And Lesia knew what it was like to love, in spite of everything.

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to the Christins for putting up with my 1 am ramblings about this.


End file.
